Taiwan travels: Anping Tianhou Mazu Temple
Located next to Old Anping Fort is the Anping Tianhou Temple (安平天后宮) dedicated to Mazu, the goddess of the sea and patron deity of fishermen, sailors and any other occupations related to the ocean. It is also known as the Kaitai (founding) Tianhou Temple (開台天后宮) because it is believed to be the oldest existing Mazu temple in Taiwan having been built soon after the arrival of Koxinga in 1668.
The temple features a rare “soft-bodied” statue of Mazu, meaning that its hands, legs and fingers all have joints and can be posed in different ways. The statue holds a handkerchief in her left hand and a fan in the right in a manner that is typical of how a woman in the Ming Dynasty woman would comport herself. It even has bound feet.
The statue is said to have been brought by Koxinga’s fleet along with other deities when he sailed over from the small island of Meizhou in Fujian, the reputed birthplace of Mazu, to remove the Dutch from Taiwan. According to one legend, the statue manifested as Mazu when the fleet was troubled by an ebbing tide and guided it safely to shore and then was enshrined to celebrate the kindness of the goddess.
The statue’s magical qualities are said to have appeared again during World War II when it protected the area from bombing and in 1990 when it protected itself with a cloak of miraculous sweat from a devastating fire that engulfed the temple.
The Mazu statue also managed to survive the destruction of the original temple structure by the Japanese after Taiwan was ceded to Japan after the Sino-Japanese was in 1895. Reconstruction of the temple on its current site began in 1962 and was completed in 1975. The original site is now occupied by a local elementary school.
Mazu is a hugely popular deity in Taiwan, with colourful festivals, parades, and pilgrimages in her honour regularly taking place all over the island. A visit to the Anping Tianhou Temple provides you with the opportunity to get a sense of where it all started over three centuries ago.
